Hmm, it seems like the article has addressed most of your points directly.
> It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all.
> But people can be smart at things and terrible at others. And it’s not that smart people are terrible at things because they aren’t curious about them, it’s just that some tasks require different mindsets. Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all.
He addressed this specific point in the "if intelligence/smartness is all that matters" scenario:
"If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn, the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude" for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it."
He is acknowledging that different people have good intelligence in different things (like engineering vs chess in your example). But he is saying this really shouldn't be the focus at all, because intelligence isn't truly what matters.
> Generating new ideas is an entirely different skill.
It is and he spent most of the article saying that skill can be cultivated (and isn't necessarily about intelligence).
> You should try and have both, and no, one is not more important than the other.
He also stated this as well at the introduction and this was pretty much the point of the essay.
> I mean the whole article feels like the stupid questions we’d ask ourselves when we were kids: would you rather have a 9-meter arm, or a boneless leg?
Not sure I get it or how the essay feels like that question. He isn't saying you can only have one (intelligence) or the other (skill to generate new ideas). He said it's ideal to have both.
> It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all.
> But people can be smart at things and terrible at others. And it’s not that smart people are terrible at things because they aren’t curious about them, it’s just that some tasks require different mindsets. Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all.
He addressed this specific point in the "if intelligence/smartness is all that matters" scenario:
"If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn, the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude" for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it."
He is acknowledging that different people have good intelligence in different things (like engineering vs chess in your example). But he is saying this really shouldn't be the focus at all, because intelligence isn't truly what matters.
> Generating new ideas is an entirely different skill.
It is and he spent most of the article saying that skill can be cultivated (and isn't necessarily about intelligence).
> You should try and have both, and no, one is not more important than the other.
He also stated this as well at the introduction and this was pretty much the point of the essay.
> I mean the whole article feels like the stupid questions we’d ask ourselves when we were kids: would you rather have a 9-meter arm, or a boneless leg?
Not sure I get it or how the essay feels like that question. He isn't saying you can only have one (intelligence) or the other (skill to generate new ideas). He said it's ideal to have both.